Luxuries We Just Can't Afford.

[trastrick]

17 hours ago, Rockers rule said:

Remember when Bins were Bins, made of riddly tin weighed a ton, emptied once a week and carried on the shoulder by blokes that thought nothing of having cold rice pudding dripping from their ear holes.

Aren't those bins are made of the dreaded plastic?

 

Even the recycling ones? 

16 hours ago, despritdan said:

What's unsustainable is this country's population which was around 50 million after the last war and has risen to around 70 million now, following decades of ever increasing levels of immigration, mainly of people from 3rd world and Islamic countries who've brought their cultural attitudes and practices with them. The things you describe used to be affordable because we had a sustainable population of hard working people who thought going to work and paying taxes was the way to behave. Contraception in the fifties allowed British couples to control the number of children they had which averaged 2.3 per family. The people coming in have brought their culture of large families and an attitude of Mother England will provide whilst the welfare state had produced an underclass who think a life on benefits is normal. You're right, the things we have taken for granted for decades are no longer affordable because there are too many people taking out and not enough putting in.

It can't end well!

 

History (and reality) can't be denied for long! 

Edited November 19, 2022 by trastrick

[Guest]

Well doesn't this thread just sum up the kind, welcoming, forward-looking community spirit that's the essence of Sheffield and its forum. 

[cressida]

Cuttsie put on a nice thread which was spoilt by showoffs.

[Guest makapaka]

7 minutes ago, cressida said:

Cuttsie put on a nice thread which was spoilt by showoffs.

 He’s not on this thread 

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, cressida said:

Cuttsie put on a nice thread which was spoilt by showoffs.

Ah, well, opinions are like arseholes, and there are quite a few of both on here.

[Rockers rule]

18 minutes ago, Hecate said:

Ah, well, opinions are like arseholes, and there are quite a few of both on here.

Thank you for your opinion, I'm sure it's a luxury none on here could have done without 🤣

[cressida]

Come on,  she can spot one a mile off😉

[lobster]

Top rate ncome tax 1950/1960's 90% coming down from 83% to 60% with the advent of Margaret Thatcher . Basic Rate was 33% -30%.

 

The moral being if you want things you have to pay for them

Edited November 19, 2022 by lobster

[pattricia]

On 18/11/2022 at 14:33, Padders said:

I've got me thinking cap on again.

So let's see if I've got this straight.

We all seem to be struggling with the cost of living crisis, and everything seems to be going Belly Up.

The experts are sitting around in huddles with their political masters, and the general consensus is that no one has the first clue how to stop this happening.

Well, unless I'm being thick, I do.

 

At present, various bits of government expenditure are being ring-fenced because, it's claimed, no civilized country can do without them.

The NHS is an obvious example, but the fact is, we may have been able to afford health care for everyone when the most expensive drug on offer was an Aspirin and teeth were removed with a hammer, now we have complex operations and lasers and colonoscopies, and exotic diseases such as Coronavirus, we cannot afford it anymore.

Nor can we afford aircraft carrier's, or by-passes, or HS2 rail links.

We now need to find £50 billion to meet the gap between what is spent and what is earned, obviously this is unsustainable.

The problem goes way beyond the big stuff, because of Global warming, or intensive farming, or possibly some satellite's crashing into Earth.......

Recently, Britain's waterways are being overrun with blue-green algae that makes them look extremely pretty, unfortunately, if you choose to swim in an affected waterway, your skin will itch and you could end up with a poorly tummy.

You can see what's going to happen next.

A small boy with freckles and a cute nose is going to end up on a BBC regional news programme all covered in diarrhoea, and his sobbing mum saying that someone should have done summat about it....To prevent this public relations disaster from unfurling, water companies are being forced to spend millions of pounds cleaning it up.

That's millions of pounds we don't have, being spent on some algae, just because some kid doesn't end up with an itchy botty.

 

It's absolutely insane,

When my kids were little, they have trodden on venomous grasshoppers, been attacked by jellfish, and battered to pieces by storm-tossed coral.

We didn't complain, it's one of those things.

But now it's somehow become a government job to prevent it happening and to build lavatories for dogs.

 

We now expect the government to provide us with everything, we expect it to protect us from algae, take away our rubbish, look after us when we are poorly, and have a bobby on every street corner, money to fight Johnny Russia, put up park benches, keep libraries open, stop planes blowing up, build roads and send an appliance round when we've caught fire.

Make sure the food we eat is delicious and nutritious and lock up vagabonds and house the poor.

We read all the time about people who borrow vast sums to fund their  sports cars and speedboats, the government is behaving in exactly the same way, fearful that if it actually made the proper cuts, the country would be cast into poverty and the chance of winning the next election gone.

Well let me make a suggestion, screw the election, and ask the question, what is poverty?

An Eton schoolboy was once asked this question, and answered.

"There was once a very poor family, the father was poor, the mother was poor, the children were poor, Even the butler was poor"

 

In the olden days you could tell at a glance if someone was existing below the poverty line, because they were 8yrs old and sitting in a gutter with a dirty face, and eating a Turnip.

Now it's more difficult, People claim to be poverty stricken even when they have mobile phones and a television set and an internet connection, have you ever seen a woman on a Bolivian rubbish tip  having a tug-of-war with a dog over an empty crisp packet, to me that's poverty.

The EU defines poverty at 60% of below the national average, In Monte Carlo, that sort of guideline would put Elton John on income support.

Here the average household income is about £35,000, now this is confusing because many pensioners fall way below this, but own the house in which they are starving to death in?

If the millionaires of this country attended a charity fund-raiser in London, they would feel very poor among the Russian Oligarchs.

 

The solution is that we all need to be recalibrated, not just us, but the whole stupid western World, we all think that street lights and having the bins emptied are essential, we must start to understand that, actually, they're luxuries, and we can't afford them anymore.

What does recalibrated mean ?

[PRESLEY]

7 minutes ago, pattricia said:

What does recalibrated mean ?

Better off asking Flapper rather than Padders.